LIBRAR Y OF CO NGRESS, 

Chap. -JQ-jS.-L.iLiL 
Shelf .Et. h\.7.a. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



\ 



\ 



9 



Judaism and the Typical Jew. 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

The Jews of Charleston, S. C, 

ON TEE 

CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE 

BIRTHDAY OF SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE 

AT THE 

HASEL STREET SYNAGOGUE, 
October 26th, 1884, 

BY 

J". BARRETT OOHEK 

11 




CHARLESTON, S. C. 

THE NEWS AND COURIER BOOK PRESSES. 

1834. ■ 




ADDRESS. 



Pride of race is one of the highest incentives to human 
action ; and the man who feels such pride will strive to 
emulate his ancestors, will endeavor to cultivate the virtues 
which they practised, and will seek to avoid every act and 
thought which will not do honor to those from whom he 
sprang. This pride is always laudable ; but when the race 
is one which has seen the Pharoahs pass away ; the empires 
of Assyria, of Babylon, of Persia, of Macedon and of Rome 
all perish ; when that race has seen the rise and fall of Greek 
civilization, Greek art, Greek philosophy and Greek legisla- 
tion ; when it has been present at the cradle and at the 
grave of the Ptolmeys and of the Csesars ; when it has seen 
the ruin of persecutor after persecutor, and has realized the 
truth of the prediction of the royal psalmist when he said 
" In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion ; 
in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me j he shall set 
me up upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted up 
above mine enemies round about me ;" when that race has 
lived through nearly four thousand years, pursuing faith- 
fully its traditions, and remaining to-day what it became 
when amid the thunders of Sinai it received the first writ- 
ten constitution which was ever given to man, the teacher 
of the great truth that God is one ; the scion of such a race 
who embodies in himself the virtues of his fathers and who 
has received the Mosaic blessing of length of days and a 
happy and prosperous life, deserves from his people the 
honor which merit can always claim — which virtue can 
always demand. 

It is no ordinary occasion which brings us together. We 
have not met to do honor to a great statesman in whose 
hands are held the weal and woe of nations. We have not 
met to crown with laurel some noble poet whose songs have 



4 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



reached our inmost heart and touched the chords of sweetest 
sympathy. We have not met to congratulate a brave sol- 
dier who has won victory after victory on bloody fields of 
battle ; but, as Jews, we have met to do honor to him 
whose victories have been won for the poor and oppressed, 
suing successfully at the footstool of Kings for others, asking 
for them mercy and freedom from persecution ; working 
cheerfully amidst plague-stricken and starving poverty for 
the benefit of his fellow men ; establishing schools for the 
ignorant and hospitals for the poor ; these victories, and 
victories such as these, have gained for Sir Moses Montefiore 
the applause of all good men and the veneration of his own 
people, who feel pride in claiming as one of themselves, him 
who has justly earned the right to be placed on that roll of 
honor which begins with Moses, the law-giver, and which 
will only end when the Jew becomes unmindful of his mis- 
sion — for a mission he has, and that the noblest which has 
ever been entrusted to man. He is the great moral teacher 
of the modern world. His mission is the preservation of 
those truths which his ancestors received centuries before 
any portion of Europe or America was known to civiliza- 
tion ; nearly fifteen centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was 
born. 

It may be asked why Jesus is mentioned in this connec- 
tion. The answer is plain. He was the Jew through whom 
the Pagan world became familiar with the truths taught by 
Judaism. That he was born a Jew no one will deny. 

For of that race was he on earth 

Whom Christians call the Son of God — 

A Jewish mother gave him birth, 
And dead ! he lay in Jewish sod. 

That he lived a Jew his own words bear witness, for when 
asked by one of the scribes "What is the first command- 
ment of all?" he answered, as reported by Saint Mark, 
" Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy' 
mind and with all thy strength. This is the first command- 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



5 



ment." Who does not recognize in this answer the Shemang 
Israel, Hear, oh Israel, the very words repeated daily by the 
Jew from the time when they were first uttered by Moses. 
In addition to this, he asserted that he had come to con- 
firm, and not to alter the law ; he partook of the paschal 
supper, and he stands to-day, as illustrated by his sermon 
on the Mount, every thought and sentence of which is taken 
from some older Jewish master, a brilliant teacher and pro- 
mulgator of some of the purest, loftiest and best thoughts 
which have had their source in Judaism. That he was a 
reformer is true. That driven by controversy he used ex- 
pressions which violated the Jewish law is also true ; but he 
is not responsible for the doctrine which makes him figure 
as the Logos, for in the words of Dr. Kuenen, Professor of 
Theology at Leiden, " The Logos doctrine of the fourth 
Gospel is essentially that of Philo," a Jewish Platonist of 
Alexandria, who was born before Jesus. 

If Sir Moses Montefiore has deserved well of his people 
it is because he is a typical Jew. His life-work is easily 
told. He was born 24th October, 1784, the year after Wil- 
liam Pitt, but twenty-four years of age, was made Prime 
Minister of England ; the year after the treaty was signed 
by Great Britain which acknowledged the independence of 
the United States ; the year after Robespierre, a young 
lawyer of twenty-five years of age, argued his first impor- 
tant cause, a defence of the introduction of Franklin's light- 
ning-rod into France ; a year after Cavendish had discover- 
ed the compound nature of water ; two years after Lavoisier, 
to whom many chemists insist is to be ascribed the founda- 
tion of modern chemistry, published his Elements of Chem- 
istry, in which he asserted that Priestley, Scheele and him- 
self had discovered oxygen gas at almost the same time. 

In the year that he was born the visit was paid to Mount 
Vernon, which was the initiatory step towards the Conven- 
tion which framed the Constitution of the United States. 
In the same year Napoleon, a youth of fifteen years, went 
to Paris to complete his military studies ; Frederick the 
Great was still living; George III was King of England, 



6 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



and the Great Catherine was Empress of Russia. Morse, 
the inventor of the telegraph, was not born until several 
years afterwards. Neither Cavour nor Garibaldi, the real 
fathers of Italian unity, came into the world until he was a 
full grown man ; and when Gambetta was born he was 
more than fifty years of age. 

He might have seen and remembered, had he been in 
Paris, the terrors of the French Revolution, the execution 
of the King and Queen, the fall of Robespierre, and the rise 
of the first Napoleon. Had he been in America he might 
have witnessed the inauguration of Washington. The Cot- 
ton Factory system which has produced so much wealth 
both in England and America, was in its earliest infancy. 
He was a man grown when the streets of London were lit 
by gas, and when Fulton's first steamboat sailed on the 
Hudson. When Stephenson ran his first Railroad wagon 
in England he was more than forty years old, and he was 
almost an old man when the Telegraph was introduced. 
He has seen the map of Europe changed a number of times, 
and the grand old man, who has to-day passed the allotted 
period of life by one score and ten years, must look with 
wonder at the difference between the active, bustling life of 
the present day, in which steam and electricity have almost 
annihilated time and space, and the period at which his 
mother gave him birth in an Italian city one hundred years 
ago. 

His father, Joseph Elias Montefiore, was a London mer- 
chant, and his mother, Rachel Mocatta, was of a well known 
Jewish family. He was named after his grandfather, who 
had emigrated from Italy to London in 1752. His educa- 
tion was received at a small commercial school, and he 
was afterwards apprenticed in a merchant's counting-house. 
When he commenced business on his own account he began 
as a stock broker, and became a member of the Stock Ex- 
change. In 1805, when there were fears of a French inva- 
sion, he became a volunteer in the Surrey militia, and 
attained the rank of Captain. In 1812 he married Judith 
Cohen, whose sister became the wife of Nathan Meyer 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



7 



Rothschild ; and the sister of Nathan Meyer Rothschild 
became the wife of a brother of Sir Moses. In 1824 he 
assisted in forming the Alliance Insurance Company, of 
which he was elected president, and he soon afterward 
retired from the Stock Exchange. 

In 1827 he, together with his wife, made his first trip to 
the Holy Land, and of that visit she wrote an account which 
was printed for private circulation. In Egypt Mr. Monte- 
flore had an interview with the Pasha Mahomet Ali, and on 
his return home brought with him the dispatches announ- 
cing the victory of Navarino. In 1837 he served as Sheriff 
of London and Middlesex, and was knighted by Queen Vic- 
toria on the occasion of her accession to the throne. 

Syria having been ravaged by the plague, Sir Moses and 
his wife paid a second visit to the East, and administered 
relief to the suffering and needy. On this visit he obtained 
from Mahomet Ali valuable concessions in favor of the 
Jews. 

In 1840, when a cruel persecution of the Jews had broken 
out in the Turkish empire, Sir Moses, accompanied by his 
wife, went to Damascus and Constantinople with M. Cre- 
mieux, the distinguished French advocate, who, though a 
Jew, was at one time Minister of Justice and of Worship in 
France, having under his supervision every minister of every 
denomination in that country. This journey resulted in 
obtaining the desired redress. To the honor of the Eng- 
lish speaking world, Jew and Christian alike contributed to 
this object ; but of the ^7000 which were raised ^"2400 
were subscribed by Sir Moses. 

In 1842 he established a dispensary in Jerusalem, and 
sent out a physician at his own private expense, and pledg- 
ed himself to support it for three years. ■ This dispensary 
was available to all who applied for relief. 

In 1846 he visited Russia on behalf of the Jews of Lithu- 
ania and Poland. He was favorably received by the Em- 
peror Nicholas, and he obtained first the suspension and 
afterwards the abandonment of the oppressive ukases. In 
this year he was made a Baronet. 



8 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



In 1855, when famine had ravaged Palestine, and a large 
amount had been raised in London for the relief of the dis- 
tressed, Sir Moses, accompanied by his wife, again went to 
that country, attended to the distribution of the funds, and 
established hospitals, schools and agricultural colonies. 

In 1858, though more than seventy years old, he went to 
Rome to ask from the Pope that the Mortara boy should 
be restored to his parents. This mission failed. 

In 1862 Lady Judith Montefiore died. Her best monu- 
ment is the Convalescent Home erected by the Jews of 
England in her memory. Her best epitaph is to be found 
impressed upon the heart of the pure and good husband by 
whom she was beloved, and of whose love she was so truly 
worthy. 

Not long after her death, when the Druses fell upon the 
Christians in Syria, Sir Moses went immediately to their 
relief. Humanity called. Men were suffering. His aid 
was required, and he hastened to perform the duty which 
he had imposed upon himself. 

In 1863 he went to Morocco for the purpose of obtaining 
from the Sultan protection for the Jews, and in this he was 
successful. In the interest of the Jews he again visited 
Russia in 1872, and was pleasantly received by the Empe- 
ror Alexander; and in 1875 he made his last journey to the 
Holy Land, and was much gratified to witness the improve- 
ment of the Jews of Jerusalem, for whose benefit he had 
so faithfully toiled for so many years. 

To recount his private charities would be impossible. 
No worthy object ever appealed to his sympathy in vain ; 
no naked poverty ever left his presence unclad ; no hungry 
mouth unfed ; no bleeding heart not comforted. 

This is not a brilliant or a showy life. It has no glowing 
page reserved in the annals of this world's history; but it is 
higher, better and nobler. It is the life of one of human- 
ity's greatest heroes ; 'the hero of the hospital ; the hero 
who amidst filth and want and squalid poverty carries the 
banner of charity and the shield of virtue, and drives away 
the demon of famine — the fiend of hunger. His is the life 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



9 



of the hero whose praises are to be heard in the daily thanks- 
giving of the widow and the orphan ; the hero whose deeds 
will surely be recorded on the brightest pages of the Book 
of Life ; for he who has never departed from the law of his 
fathers has lived a life of such pure benevolence and active 
intelligent charity that he, much more than any other man 
of this century, and as much as any man who has ever 
lived, deserves to be remembered as one who "loved his 
fellow men." 

This life, so pure and so noble, would invite the question : 
" What has the Jewish race done to entitle it to claim that 
such a life is the outcome of such an origin?" 

The Jews occupy a peculiar place in history. Their first 
appearance as a nation was when Moses, that most practi- 
cal Of men and ablest of law-givers and organizers, led them 
out of Egyptian bondage and delivered to them a code of 
laws perfect from a religious and moral stand-point, equally 
perfect from a sanitary point of view, and for political pur- 
poses absolutely well adapted to the objects for which they 
were designed. For the first and only time in history, a 
people held in servitude was at one and the same time 
emancipated, made the recipient of a great moral and polit- 
ical code, and constituted the teachers of the enlightened 
world. Centuries, it is true, passed away before their doc- 
trines spread among the nations of the earth ; centuries 
passed away before the truths taught by Judaism were 
recognized even in part ; and centuries more may pass be- 
fore the world will be prepared to receive the monotheistic 
moral practical code known as Judaism in its purest form ; 
but when Alexander the Great paid reverence to the High 
Priest before entering Jerusalem ; when he answered Par- 
menio " It is not the man whom I worship, but his God " ; 
when he sacrificed in the Temple at Jerusalem, the Pagan 
world began its preparation to receive its legacy from Juda- 
ism. 

Alexander was a pupil of Aristotle. His conquests 
brought the thought of the Greek and of the Oriental into 
contact. He founded the city of Alexandria, which was 
2 



10 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



partly settled by Jews. His successor, Ptolmey, pursued 
his liberal policy and founded the Alexandrian Library ; 
and in that library, and not at Bethlehem, Christianity was 
really born. Here the Bible was translated into Greek and 
became the common property of the nations. This was 
done by Ptolmey Philadelphus at the suggestion of his 
librarian, Demetrius Phalerius. This King, according to 
the account given by Josephus, wrote to the High Priest a 
letter, in which he says: "King Ptolmey to Eleazar the 
High Priest, sends greeting: There are many Jews who 
dwell in my kingdom whom the Persians, when they were 
in power, carried captive. These were honored by my 
father. * * *■ * an d when I had taken the govern- 
ment I treated all men with great humanity, and especially 
those who are thy fellow-citizens, of whom I have set free 
above one hundred thousand that were slaves, and paid the 
price of their redemption out of my own revenue ;" and 
after stating other services rendered to them, he continues : 
" As I am desirous to do what will be grateful to them and 
to all the other Jews in the habitable globe, I have deter- 
mined to provide an interpretation of your law, and to have 
it translated out of Hebrew into Greek, and to be deposited 
in my library;" and he asks him to choose for him six men 
out of every tribe " skilful in the laws and of ability to 
make an accurate interpretation." When that translation 
was made the first step was taken towards establishing a 
new religion. The Five Books of Moses, together with the 
Prophets, the Psalms, the history, the morals and the 
poetry of the Bible became an open book to all. The 
Macedonean had become the master of the Jew, but as 
Greece conquered became at a later period the conqueror 
of her conqueror through art and culture, so did the Jew 
through a single Book give law to Greece and Rome ; that 
law which recognized the presence of God at all times and 
in all places, guiding and directing mankind how to live 
happily through the constant practice of virtue, justice, 
mercy and love. " The Jewish covenant," says Schlegel, 
" and the old revelation of the Hebrews, formed the chief 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



11 



corner-stone on which Christianity was founded." Yes, 
Judaism is the chief corner-stone of Christianity ; and that 
corner-stone was laid at Alexandria, and the chief builder 
was Ptolmey Philadelphus. Another of the builders was 
Philo. " Real science, according to his philosophy," to use 
the words of another, u is the gift of God ; its name is faith ; 
its origin is the goodness of God ; its essence is piety." 
Under his theory we cannot know God in the essence, and 
in order to know him we must know him through the 
Word (Aoyof), which is of two kinds — thought as thought 
and thought become the world. Here is a Trinity already 
fully formulated, or as Gibbon expresses it, " a union of the 
Mosaic and the Grecian philosophy distinguishes the works 
of Philo, which were composed for the most part under the 
reign of Augustus." 

Christianity was born before the birth of Jesus. The 
Bible of the Jew had been translated, Rome was Mistress 
of the World, Faith in the gods had disappeared, but to 
introduce monotheistic ideas among the masses of the 
people of whom the Roman empire was composed, without 
adding a human element, would have been impossible. The 
people were in the habit of seeing the statues of the Gods. 
Jupiter was the son of Saturn and of Rhea. Of all the 
Gods and Goddesses Minerva alone was born without a 
living mother; and even she sprang ready armed from the 
head of Jupiter, who had swallowed his wife Metis to pre- 
vent the birth of offspring. The Logos of Philo in part, 
but in part only, supplied the want ; but as a purely philo- 
sophical conception the doctrine could not become popular 
without the introduction of a human element which men 
could see and hear and know. This element was supplied 
by Jesus. He had eaten and drank, and worked and slept, 
and joyed and'sorrowed and suffered on earth, and with him 
as a moral teacher who had lived and died among his fellow 
men, and with the Jewish doctrine of the Resurrection some- 
what modified, it was easy to join the Bible of the Jew with 
the fable of the Pagan. It was easy to teach the morals of 
Moses when the watchful superintending and invisible but 



12 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



all-seeing God of the Jew had become combined with human 
flesh and blood. 

The partial development of Jewish thought which among 
Western peoples took the form of Christianity, among the 
Easterns found its expression in Mohamedanism. Christi- 
anity introduced the human element into its conception of 
the Godhead. The Eastern mind rejected this and insisted 
on the unity of God, but it accepted Mahomet as his pro- 
phet, and his doctrines as the revelation of absolute truth. 
While Mohamedism is a great step in advance of the East- 
ern doctrines which existed prior to the advent of Mahomet, 
still it is far from the entire truth promulgated by the chil- 
dren of Israel ; and that truth must sooner or later prevail. 
" The Jew," says Montesquieu in his Lettrcs Persancs, 
" is an old trunk which has produced two branches that 
have covered all the earth — I mean Mohamedanism and 
Christianity ; or rather she is a mother who has brought 
two daughters into the world who have overwhelmed her 
with a thousand wounds, because in matters of religion the 
nearest are the greatest enemies. But however badly she 
has been treated she cannot cease to boast of having given 
them birth. She uses the one and the other to embrace the 
entire world, whilst on the other hand her venerable old 
age embraces all time." These eloquent words of the cele- 
brated author of IS Esprit des Lois fully express the position 
of Judaism towards the two religions to which she has given 
birth. She is truly a proud mother, feeling no envy or un- 
kindness towards either of her children, taking pride in their 
success, though feeling sorrow for their errors, and hoping 
that the time will come when they will be her noblest cham- 
pions in the war for truth. 

If Judaism had done nothing more than to have given 
birth to Mohamedanism and to Christianity — and it must 
not be forgotten that the Jew and Pharisee Paul was the 
Apostle of the Gentiles — it would have accomplished enough 
to have made every Jew proud of his origin and unwilling to 
surrender his birthright ; but this is only a small part of 
what it has done, and a very small part of what it yet can 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



do. It has already made the world purer and better and 
nobler. It has made those thoughts and those motives of 
action which were formerly known only to the greatest phi- 
losophers the common property of the masses, both among 
Christians and Mohamedans. It has done more than this. 
It has taught mankind both how to live and how to die ; 
how to enjoy the present and how to be prepared for the 
future beyond the grave. It has produced in Moses the 
greatest of law-givers. It has in the authors of the Book 
of Job, the Psalms and the Prophets given to the world 
poets who will live so long as noble thoughts nobly express- 
ed shall find a responsive echo in the human heart. It has 
produced generals who conquered a country which was dedi- 
cated to the promulgation of eternal truth, and who oppos- 
ed often, it is true unsuccessfully, the greatest nations of 
antiquity. In more modern times it produced writers and 
thinkers who aided largely in the revival of letters in Eu- 
rope. In the words of Michelet, one of the most brilliant 
of the French historians : " We should not forget the im- 
mense title which they (the Jews) acquired during the Mid- 
dle Ages to universal gratitude. They were for a long time 
the only link which connected the East and the West ; which 
in this impious divorce of humanity, deceiving the fanati- 
cism of Christian and Mussulman, preserved between the 
one World and the other a permanent communication of 
commerce and of light. Their numerous synagogues, their 
schools, their academies spread everywhere, were the chain 
on which the human race, divided against itself, still vibra- 
ted with a common intellectual life. This is not all. There 
was an hour when all barbarism, the Frank, the Greek Icono- 
clast, the Arabs of Spain, all agreed, without concerting 
among themselves, to make war on Thought. Where did 
she hide then? In the humble asylum that the Jews gave 
her. Alone they persisted in thinking, and alone remained 
in that accursed hour the mysterious conscience of the 
world." High praise this, but not too high, because it is 
absolutely true. Judaism taught the world the arts of 
peace, and its merchants invented the Bill of Exchange. 



14 



JUDAISM AND THIS TYPICAL JEW. 



Jews caused Vasco da Gama to sail around the Cape of 
Good Hope, and thereby revolutionize commerce, and Jew- 
ish scientists predicted the success of the first voyage of 
Columbus ; Jewish statesmen to-day rank among the great- 
est in the world, and England, which less than thirty years 
ago excluded a Jew from Parliament, has but recently 
buried her greatest statesman since the days of William 
Pitt, a man who, had he lived, might have saved her from 
her Egyptian complications, a son of Jewish parents who 
proudly bore the name of Benjamin D'Israeli — Benjamin of 
Israel, or Benjamin the Jew. 

How markedly in contrast does this stand with the con- 
dition of the Jew in England at the time of which Lord 
Coke speaks when he says : " I find by the ancient law of 
England that if any Christian man did marry with a woman 
that was a Jew, or a Christian woman that married with a 
Jew, it was felony, and the party so offending should be 
burnt ;" and when he cites Fleta as saying that such parties 
as made such contracts in terra vivi confodiantur. How 
different is this from the time when a Jew in England 
having bought land and married a Jewess, became convert- 
ed and died leaving his widow surviving him, but uncon- 
verted to Christianity, it was held that the widow was not 
entitled to dower for this reason given in the record as 
stated by Lord Coke, quia vcro contra justitiam est quod 
ipsa dot em pet at vel Jiabeat de teneincnto quod fuit viri sui ex 
quo in conversione sua noluit cum eo adherere ct cum eo con- 
verti. How different is this from the time when the Jew 
was expelled from the kingdom, and even from a period as 
late as the times of Lord Chancellor Parker, afterwards 
Lord Macclesfield, who in favor of a Jewess who had turned 
Protestant, defeated the will of her father on the flimsy pre- 
tence that a secret trust might have existed in favor of the 
daughter in case of her return to the religion of her fathers. 
How strikingly in contrast is this and the distinguished 
position which such Jews as Cremieux and Fould and others 
have taken in France during the present century, with the 
time when if a French Jew became a Christian his property 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



15 



was confiscated, because by his conversion the feudal lord 
lost certain rights ; from the time when if a French Jew did 
not become a Christian he was scourged and burned ; from 
the time when he was expelled from France, and when even 
the French possessions in America did not afford him a 
place of refuge. 

In every field of politics, art, literature, science and com- 
merce, Jewish representatives are among the ablest, and 
what is most remarkable, the Jew has constantly seen the 
end of his enemies. He has in the course of ages outlived 
persecutor after persecutor. The empire of Constantine, 
who condemned him to the flames, has long ceased to exist. 
Spain in the hour of her greatest prosperity expelled the 
Jew cruelly from her dominions, and that expulsion was the 
beginning of her downfall. Nearly every dynasty through 
which the Jew has suffered has perished. It was but yes- 
terday that the little Jew Mortara was forcibly taken away 
from his parents because he had been surreptitiously bap- 
tized by his nurse. Sir Moses Montefiore sought to have 
the wrong righted, and failed. The Jew in Rome at that 
time had but few rights, but Sir Moses has lived to see 
within sight of the Palace of the Vatican and beneath the 
shadow of the dome of Saint Peters, eight Jews sitting in 
the Italian Chamber of Deputies, and two Jewish members 
sitting at Rome in the Italian Senate. 

It is no matter of surprise that the Jew has continued to 
exist in spite of persecution ; in spite of his contact with 
other sects; in spite of every obstacle which he has found 
in his path since the destruction of the Temple by the troops 
of Titus, whose Triumphal Arch with the figures of captive 
Jews going before the triumphal car of the conqueror, the 
golden table, the sacred vases, the silver trumpet, the seven 
branched candlestick and other spoils of the Temple, still 
stands at Rome near the ruins of the Colisseum and of the 
Palaces of the Caesars, proclaiming to the world that Em- 
pires as powerful as Rome once was may fall, but the Jew 
will survive, as he has so often survived the wreck of na- 
tions. He will continue to survive as long as the work 



16 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



allotted to him shall be unfinished ; so long as pure and un- 
adulterated monotheism is not accepted by all men. Like 
a lamp he stands among the nations lighting them on the 
road to truth, and showing them how to avoid that " Valley 
of the Shadow of Death " which not only kills the body but 
also destroys the soul. The day has not yet come, the day 
may still be very distant, but come it will, when the whole 
truth of which he is the guardian will become the common 
heritage of all mankind ; and in that sense will the prophecy 
be fulfilled which declares that " ten men shall take hold 
out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of 
the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying we will go with you 
for we have heard that God is with you." It is not hoping 
too much to believe that the day will come when this will 
be the case. All people have their mission, and when their 
mission is accomplished they pass away and are swallowed 
up by others who have work to do. A people that contin- 
ues to exist as the Jew has continued, must have been left 
for some wise purpose. No effete people preserve their 
individuality, and the preservation of the Jew, scattered as 
he is and forming as he does a part of every nation, is the 
best evidence that in the economy of nature his presence is 
necessary. It is necessary to finish the lesson which has up 
to the present time been only partly learned by Christian 
and. Mohamedan — the lesson which teaches the absolute 
unity of God, perfect purity of human life and perfect cha- 
rity to all mankind. 

From a philosophic stand-point it is not to be wondered 
at that a people whose law of marriage and whose dietic 
laws keep them separate and apart from other people, 
should have preserved their race-distinction in every coun- 
try and in every climate ; but it is a legitimate subject of 
inquiry to ascertain the causes which have produced their 
mental, moral and physical superiority over other people, 
which statistics show. The answer is to be found in the 
laws of Moses. Men, like the lower animals and plants, 
may be improved greatly by training. If the doctrine of 
evolution is true in nothing else, it is true in this: that the 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



17 



constant cultivation of certain qualities will develop them 
in man, beast or plant. The Jewish Code provided in the 
first place for the moral man. His duty to God, to his 
family and to his fellow man is rigidly defined. The sani- 
tary code is equally clear and explicit. The moral law was 
intended to make a pure and good man fitted either for 
citizenship of the world or to take his place in the City of 
God. The sanitary law was intended to make a strong, vig- 
orous and healthy man. The two combined, in developing 
high moral and physical culture, could not fail to produce 
a markedly healthful intellectual and virtuous race. The 
only thing which could prevent such development would be 
the neglect of the fundamental law. The Jew was taught 
to say daily " Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one 
Lord." He was thus constantly reminded that an all-seeing 
eye is fixed upon his every movement ; that a watchful 
ruler governs from Heaven the people brought " out of the 
land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage ;" a jealous 
God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generations, and rewards those 
who love him and keep his commandments. Not only was 
he commanded to keep the commandments, but also to 
speak of them at all times and in all places, at home and 
abroad, when he lies down and when he rises up. This con- 
stant study of the law enjoined upon the descendants of 
Jacob has always been observed. " None are accounted 
free," is the maxim of the Jewish fathers, "but those en- 
gaged in the study of the law." Jose Ben Joezer said : 
"Let thy house be a house of assembly for the wise men, 
and dust thyself with the dust of their feet and drink their 
words in thirstiness." Hillelsaid: "Be of the disciples of 
Aaron, who loved peace and pursued peace, so that thou 
love mankind and allure them to the study of the law ;" 
and he also said : " Whoever is ambitious of aggrandizing 
his name destroys his name, and who doth not increase his 
knowledge in the law shall be cut off, and who doth not 
study the law is deserving of death." Rabbi Gamaliel said : 
" Procure thyself an instructor that thou mayest not be in 
3 



18 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



doubt ;" and Shamai said : " Let thy study of the law be 
fixed ; say little and do much, and receive all men with an 
open countenance." One more saying of the Rabbis, taken 
from the Pirke Aboth, will suffice to illustrate fully the value 
which the Jew placed upon the study of the law. Rabbi 
Jose Ben Kishma said : " If thou wouldst give me all the 
gold and silver in the universe I would not dwell in a place 
but where the law is studied, because at the time of man's 
departure from this world he is not accompanied either with 
silver or gold, but with the law and good deeds only." 

This constant study of the law enjoined in the Bible and 
insisted on by the old Jewish masters, had for its object the 
making men know their duty, so that they might be able to 
perform it fully. No knowledge, however great, could avail 
without works. The Jewish law was always practical. One 
of the Rabbis, Eleazar Ben Azarya, asks : " To what may he 
be likened whose wisdom exceedeth his good deeds?" and 
he answers the question thus: "To a tree whose branches 
are many and its roots scanty, so that the wind cometh and 
plucketh it away and overturned! it ; as it is said for he 
shall be as a blasted tree upon the waste, which is not sen- 
sible when good cometh, but is continually exposed to the 
scorching heat in the desert, a barren land and uninhabit- 
able." " But," he continues, to what is he like whose 
good deeds exceed his wisdom?" " To a tree," he answers, 
" whose branches are few and its roots many, so that if the 
most violent tempest discharge its fury against it, it will not 
move from its place; as is said: for he shall be like a tree 
planted by the waterside, which by the side of the stream 
sendeth forth its roots and is riot sensible the heat cometh, 
but its leaf is green, and in a year of drought it is without 
concern, nor doth it decline bearing fruit ;" and Rabbi 
Meyer used to say : " Those who are born are doomed to 
die, the dead to live, and they who are risen from the dead 
to be judged ;" and he also said : " Know this, that every 
thing is done according to the account, and let not thine 
evil imagination pursuade thee that the grave is a place of 
refuge for thee ; for against thy will wast thou formed, and 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



19 



against thy will wast thou born, and against thy will dost 
thou live, and against thy will wilt thou die ; and against 
thy will must thou hereafter render an account and receive 
judgment in the presence of the Supreme King of Kings, 
the holy God, blessed is he." 

The constant study of the law and rigid adherence to its 
precepts whereby health and morals have both been pre- 
served, coupled with the belief that the great I AM is the 
governing head of the people, and that though unseen he 
is always present, ready to reward and quick to punish, has 
made the Jew what he is to-day. This practice has kept the 
Jew faithful to his God and to his people. With firm faith 
he has clung to the religion which has made him the speci- 
ally chosen instrument of Providence in the accomplish- 
ment of the true redemption of mankind. This practice 
has taught him for nearly forty centuries, that living right- 
eously, doing justice, performing deeds of mercy, loving his 
neighbor as himself, and observing the laws of nature and 
the law of God, will best secure his happiness in this life ; 
will best prepare him for the life to come. The faithful 
observance of these laws has preserved the Jew, and made 
him at all times and in all countries a faithful citizen and a 
good man, because of being a God fearing and a God loving 
man. He has always kept before him the precept of Rabbi 
Tarphon, who said : " If thou hast diligently studied the 
law thou wilt receive great reward ; for the Master who em- 
ployed thee is faithful to pay the reward of the labor; but 
know that the payment of the reward of the righteous is in 
the future state ;" and also the precept of Akabea Ben 
Mahallel, who said " ponder on these things and thou wilt 
not be led to the commission of sin. Consider from whence 
thou comest, whither thou goest and in whose presence thou 
must in futurity render an account." 

Pico de la Mirandola, one of the most charming products 
of the Italian Renaissance, said, speaking of Jewish philoso- 
phy : " I find in it Saint Paul and Plato at the same time." 
He found in it all that was best in the Apostle of the Gen- 
tiles and in the purest and noblest of the Greek philoso- 



20 



JUDAISM AND THE TYPICAL JEW. 



phers. This philosophy having its sources in the law of 
Moses, taught the Jew to fear God and to love mankind ; 
and has sustained him in the frightful struggle which he has 
had to undergo with adversity, with persecution and with 
bigotry. Even at his mother's knee the Jewish child is 
taught these lessons of life, for it was a maxim of the Jew- 
ish Rabbis that " he who teaches a child is like to one who 
writes on clean paper, but he who teaches old people is like 
to one who writes on blotted paper;" and hence it is that 
the statistics show that Jewish children in public schools 
are not only remarkable for their intellectual capacity, but 
also for conduct ; and the records of crime exhibit a very 
small number of the descendants of Abraham on the list of 
criminals; and hence also it is that the Jew has ever won 
from his enemies the acknowledgment that in the Jewish 
house will be found a united family, in which the men are 
industrious, the women pure, the children obedient ; and all 
together, men, women and children, ready at all times to 
extend a helping hand to the poor and to the distressed. 

Sir Moses Montefiore has been all his life an earnest fol- 
lower of the faith of his fathers. He has lived the ideal life 
of a typical Jew. He has performed his duty as he learned 
it nearly one hundred years ago from the lips of his parents, 
who had learned it from their fathers and their fathers' fath- 
ers, through whom the precepts had been transmitted since 
the time when they stood among the tribes of Israel at the 
foot of Sinai, and received the law from the prophet Moses. 
Myself, the great grandson of an English Jewish Rabbi, Dr. 
Moses Cohen, who nearly one hundred and fifty years ago 
was the first teacher of the Jewish law in South Carolina, 
and one of the first Jewish teachers in America, I confess 
that I feel no little pride in doing honor to him who by his 
life has shown that strict adhesion to the Jewish law will 
produce the highest type of man. Sir Moses Montefiore 
has always recognized that an all-seeing eye is ever watch- 
ing him. He has always felt that he is in the hands of an 
all-protecting providence. He has lived a life so pure, so 
good, so useful and so benevolent that no words of eulogy 



Judaism and the typical jew. 



21 



would be extravagant. Obedience to the laws which his 
fathers obeyed has given him long life and happiness on 
earth. This obedience has given him the love, the respect 
and the admiration of his fellow men. This obedience has 
earned for him the gratitude of the widow and the orphan, 
the poor and the distressed, those who have been stricken 
by plague, oppressed by power or hungering for food, all of 
whom bless the pure and good man and faithful citizen of 
his country, who has brought them succor in their need, 
and comfort in their distress. Without reference to creed 
or nationality, he has been the apostle of charity of the 
nineteenth century ; and when the roll of honor is unfurled 
on which the names of this world's benefactors are recorded, 
side by side will be seen the names of the prophet Moses, 
of Moses Maimonides, of Moses Mendelsohn, and of Moses 
Montefiore. 



